Posted on 03/02/2003 8:54:18 AM PST by sinkspur
Prominent friar's counseling criticized by NJ diocese, victims
In the world according to Father Benedict Groeschel, the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal is largely the stuff of fiction. Reporters "doing the work of Satan" are driven to lie, the New York priest says, because they hate the church's moral teachings.
These are not the opinions of a marginal figure. Indeed, Father Groeschel is one of the most prominent priests in America, reaching millions with his books, tapes, parish lectures and regular appearances on the Eternal Word Television Network.
His stature is high among many church leaders, too – he has heard the confessions of a cardinal, consulted with the Vatican on a case for sainthood, been a friend to Mother Teresa.
The preface to his media-blaming 2002 book From Scandal to Hope was written by Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who praised Father Groeschel for putting the abuse scandal in context.
For all his commentary on the crisis, Father Groeschel has revealed few details about his role as a player in it: He has been a key figure for 30 years in the loose-knit nationwide network of therapists who have helped troubled priests keep working.
The Franciscan friar's base is a mansion on Long Island Sound, where he runs the Archdiocese of New York's spiritual development office and Trinity Retreat Center for clergy. There, according to his own written account, he has counseled hundreds of his brethren and "happily, 85 priests have returned to the active ministry."
Father Groeschel, who declined interview requests, has not said publicly how many of his clients were accused of abuse. Archdiocesan spokesman Joseph Zwilling would not comment on Father Groeschel.
Dallas Bishop Charles Grahmann has allowed one of his priests, removed from parish work after the diocese concluded he had abused a girl, to help manage the retreat center in recent years. That priest, the Rev. Richard T. Brown, moved to a hermitage a few months ago and "is not contactable," said Father Groeschel's secretary, June Pulitano. Neither she nor Bishop Grahmann's spokesman, Bronson Havard, would identify the hermitage.
Mr. Zwilling said Father Brown "never did any pastoral work" in the archdiocese and did not have its permission to serve as a priest there.
Leaders of the neighboring Diocese of Paterson, N.J., one of several that sent business to Father Groeschel, blamed three "unfortunate" reassignments on his advice. Two of those priests were subsequently accused of misconduct in their new jobs.
"We relied on his recommendations," said Marianna Thompson, spokeswoman for Paterson Bishop Frank Rodimer. Father Groeschel used words such as "transformation," she said, and helped arrange transfers between dioceses.
Ms. Thompson said Father Groeschel had much to recommend him – he had taught pastoral psychology at Catholic institutions and had a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University's Teachers College. He had close ties to the late New York Cardinal John O'Connor, who endorsed the friar's secession from a Franciscan order in the 1980s and formation of a new group that has won renown for service to the poor. The cardinal earlier had Father Groeschel prepare the sainthood case for the previous leader of New York Catholics, Cardinal Terence Cooke, for whom the priest had served as confessor.
In From Scandal to Hope, completed shortly before the nation's bishops met in Dallas last summer, Father Groeschel acknowledged that some priests had abused boys. He described the problem as "active homosexuality with minors," stressing that most victims were teenagers and never mentioning girls.
"Many of the cases now in the papers are about clergy who, perhaps under the influence of alcohol two or three decades ago, engaged in improper actions, but not sexual acts," he wrote. "They went into treatment and have behaved well over the years."
Father Groeschel also said that church leaders sometimes had relied, to their detriment, on the advice of behavioral experts.
"I've been involved in psychology for four decades, and we in the profession were naïve enough to think that these offenders could almost always be cured," he wrote. Therapists "often were correct in their assessments," but "were sometimes tragically wrong about a particular case."
Father Groeschel said nothing in his book about his own success rate in treating priests.
He saved his harshest words for the news media's coverage of the abuse issue, which he called a "blitz of lies." Like Adolf Hitler, he wrote, news organizations are "spreading lies in order to destroy" the Catholic Church.
"When a scandal occurs," the priest wrote, "about two percent of what is said in the media is true." Last month, he made similar statements to a standing-room-only crowd at a suburban Boston church.
Such statements have infuriated victims. "It just burns me to no end," said Buddy Cotton, who has accused the Rev. James Hanley of abusing him in the Paterson Diocese and recently called Bishop Rodimer to complain about Father Groeschel.
The bishop, Mr. Cotton said, agreed that Father Groeschel "had failed a lot of victims."
Ms. Thompson, the bishop's spokeswoman, said Father Groeschel's critique of the media was misguided. "Bishop Rodimer has told the media, 'Thank you for opening the window on this,' " she said. "The media have been fair. We created this story, not the press."
The victims
Father Groeschel has said he is sensitive to victims. "As a psychologist for priests, I have occasionally spoken to the victims of priests and to their families," he wrote in From Scandal to Hope. "I can only say that I am deeply, deeply grieved. I often had to accept their anger, not directed personally at me, but at Church authorities. ...
"I am willing," he added, "to suffer with the victims."
Mark Serrano, who also has said that Father Hanley abused him as a boy, questioned Father Groeschel's sincerity. His skepticism, he said, is based on an experience he had after his family's complaints led Bishop Rodimer to suspend Father Hanley.
In 1986, the year after the abuse complaints, Mr. Serrano agreed to talk to Father Groeschel, who was counseling Father Hanley. Mr. Serrano, who was then a college student, said he thought the counselor "wanted more information" for therapeutic purposes. Instead, Mr. Serrano said, Father Groeschel lashed out at him.
"He said, 'Why don't you stop harassing this poor priest? He's a sick man. You are wrong for what you're doing to him.' "
Monsignor Kenneth Lasch, a Paterson diocesan priest, said he had urged Mr. Serrano to talk with Father Groeschel because the friar had expressed pastoral concern for Mr. Serrano – "something like, 'Mark seems to be a troubled person.' "
Hearing Mr. Serrano's account of what ensued "left me very, very uncomfortable," Monsignor Lasch said, "and made me wonder what was going on" at Father Groeschel's retreat center.
Father Groeschel's 2002 book warned that Catholics would still face a crisis after "the media monster ... slither[s] away to attack other victims." He prescribed a return to conservative moral teachings, saying that nothing would restore confidence in church leadership "better than a firm stance against pornography, extramarital sex, abortion, euthanasia and the general moral decline of the United States. ... Tough topics like contraception and autoeroticism need to be consistently and publicly addressed."
He said that the news media fail to mention that most priests aren't pedophiles, that cover-ups occur in other denominations, and that abusers "are among the most penitent people I've ever met in my whole life."
He cited the example of the late Atlanta Archbishop Eugene Marino, who resigned in 1990 after an affair with a young woman in lay ministry and went to Father Groeschel's retreat center, in the New York City suburb of Larchmont. He "lived a life of extreme humiliation, humility and penitence," Father Groeschel wrote.
In the mid-1990s, Archbishop Marino became spiritual director of the outpatient Clergy Consultation and Treatment Service at St. Vincent's Hospital, near Trinity Retreat. It was formed at the request of the late Cardinal O'Connor and works closely with the retreat center.
One priest who was counseled by Archbishop Marino and Father Groeschel was the Rev. Morgan Kuhl.
He was sent to them in 1999, after he solicited sex online from undercover officers posing as adolescent boys and was arrested. The subsequent FBI investigation showed that he had met teens this way and abused them.
Clergy treatment
The prosecution of Father Kuhl, who has been removed from ministry, opened a rare window into the Catholic clergy treatment system.
A psychologist who evaluated Father Kuhl for federal prosecutors recommended that he "be enrolled in a program specific to sex offenders," not just in the general psychotherapy and spiritual counseling he was getting. Dr. Barry Katz wrote that the priest "expressed regret over the effects that his actions have had upon himself, but no remorse for the effect that his actions have had upon the minors with whom he was involved."
After pleading guilty, Father Kuhl apologized to a judge for "the hurt and the embarrassment that I have caused so many other people." He also said he had devoted his life to helping others, and had learned in church-sponsored therapy "that there was one person I never did seem to try to help, and that was myself."
U.S. District Judge Anne Thompson initially sentenced Father Kuhl to a short prison term followed by house arrest. But she later reduced the penalty, over the objections of prosecutor Donna Krappa, to five years of probation and ordered the priest to "adhere to the program requirements at Trinity Retreat."
In advocating probation, Father Groeschel represented himself to the court as a counseling psychologist, Ms. Krappa said in an interview. New York state officials said he has never had the license generally required for use of that title. Using the title without a license is a misdemeanor, state officials said.
"I think that the judge would have been interested in this fact," Ms. Krappa said, "when she considered the quality of treatment Father Kuhl was receiving through the archdiocese."
Whatever mistakes Fr. Groeschel made in the specific cases cited, he is absolutely right when he says that the chief problem is "active homosexuality with minors."
Bravo, well done B Knotts!
This is the bottom line, Sink.
If you had a shred of decency, you'd ask the mods to pull this homo anti-Catholic hit piece.
Perhaps you missed this, colleen:
Father Groeschel, who declined interview requests, has not said publicly how many of his clients were accused of abuse.
Unlike the rectors of the seminaries, whom Rose never asked, Groeschel was asked, and refused comment.
You can call the article "trash" if you wish. But you cannot refute Groeschel's complicity in returning men to the priesthood who had been abusers. You also cannot refute that one of the victims was verbally accosted by Groeschel and told "what you are doing to this man is wrong."
If Egerton's wrong, or is engaged in a smear, there is one man who can clear things up and whom I would believe over the author.
Let's see if he'll come forward.
I really thought you above this kind of thing, at least after the agenda of the author has been revealed.
Swallow your pride and admit your article is a gay agenda driven hit piece to which Groeschel has to obligation no respond, OK?
Its too easy to see through this, now that the other pieces of the puzzle are revealed.
What's the bottom line? That the abusers are homosexual men preying on adolescents?
If that's the case, then why did Groeschel recommend that they be returned to the ministry, some in ministry involving young men? Did Groeschel not recognize that these men were active homosexuals? If he didn't, what kind of psychologist is he?
If you had a shred of decency, you'd ask the mods to pull this homo anti-Catholic hit piece.
I have decency. That's why I want all the pus to be drained from this boil. Groeschel is a psychologist who was complicit in returning men to the priesthood who didn't belong there. He also made this recommendation to clueless prelates like Bernard Law, and, as a result, Law is doing penance today because he listened to "experts" like Groeschel.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant, Dr. Surely, in your line of work, you know that.
This isn't about his "sexual orientation"; it is about the fact that this guy has an obvious agenda, as the chair of a pro-homosexuality organization. I take his denunciations of Fr. Groeschel with a grain of salt.
Yes, there has been unspeakable evil done to many people, but the answer is not to abandon moral teaching; the answer is to finally embrace it, to the degree possible, given our sinful natures. I'm guessing the author has a, shall we say, different perspective on that idea, though.
He has written countless articles about this scandal, especially on priests in the Dallas Diocese.
Oh, yeah...I reckon he has. I wonder about his motivation, and about his fairness and accuracy. Would you accept unquestionably an article about Saddam, written by a Frenchman?
What you say is beside the point. What I want to know is, if these priests were homosexual men preying on young men, why did Groeschel recommend they be returned to the ministry?
Either he recognized they were, and covered for them, or he didn't, which means he's not much of a "psychologist."
At this point, I'm prepared to believe either one.
You're right. I would expect an open homosexual to advocate homosexuality.
But I would not expect a priest who rails against homosexuality to cooperate in returning actively homosexual priests to the ministry.
Nah. Hit piece. I bet not many gays like "The Courage to be Chaste" written by Fr. Benedict Groeschel and would like the opportunity to impugn his motives.
It turns out that Groeschel doesn't even have the requisite license to practice as a "counseling psychologist" in New York.
It's amazing that you'll depend on one throw away line in a newspaper article to believe the worst about someone who is a man of God.
Fr. Groeschel has a doctorate in psychology from Columbia. Whaddya think he's been doing for the past 30 years? Posing?
It's not about the "journalist." Groeschel can clear all this up in short order. Deny or confirm the statements and accusations made in this article, and the other one, which lists three priests, all counseled by Groeschel, who were returned to ministry and abused other young people.
Call the Diocese of Paterson. Ask for Ms. Thompson. Ask her if the statements made in this article are true, or not. In fact, I might do that tomorrow myself.
Should I not believe what Bob Woodward writes because he once screwed around on his wife? To make this about Brooks Egerton is an attempt to change the subject.
Either he has a license to practice as a "counseling psychologist," or he doesn't.
The prosecutor in the article above thinks it's significant. I'd hardly call that a "throw-away" line.
OK. Groeschel writes against homosexuality. Why did he recommend that actively homosexual men be returned to priestly ministry? Or did he not recognize them as such?
I'm glad you're taking this step. Tell us what happens. Otherwise, it's grossly unfair to Fr. Benedict to characterize him in this way. I agree with Polycarp, he has not obligation to respond to charges from this journalist (though he may want to discern about making a statement in the future).
How is Egerton "impugning" Groeschel's motives? What are Groeschel's motives?
Why would a priest who is so outspoken against homosexuality participate in returning men to ministry who have an opportunity to prey on young men again?
Did Groeschel think he had cured these men of their homosexual tendencies?
Nobody has an obligation to respond to any charges made in the media as long as they are willing to live with the consequences of that silence.
Read that part again... the author doesn't say the interview requests came from him or the newspaper he writes for. Kind of a weird omission.
You can call the article "trash" if you wish. But you cannot refute Groeschel's complicity in returning men to the priesthood who had been abusers. You also cannot refute that one of the victims was verbally accosted by Groeschel and told "what you are doing to this man is wrong."
I'm not refuting that Fr. G may have returned men who had been abusers to the priesthood - he says as much in the quote I posted and also the article you posted here. It seems to me, from wide reading on this subject, that there were very few men barred from returning to their former way of life (including priests, teachers, parents, etc) after counciling and treatment by ALL psychologists... religious and secular. It was understood that the abusers could be treated and cured until very recently.
And do we know what the victim was doing to the priest? I'd like to know more about that story. For instance, he could have been unrelenting in his condemnation of his abuser or he could have been threatening to kill him... one thing is wrong and the other is not.
Hey, Father Groeschel isn't perfect, but he is trying to do the right thing as best he can. He has been a shining light for most of us. This article is a hit piece.
If the state knows Fr. G has no license (per Mr.Egerton) and he is practicing as something he is not, why hasn't he been arrested? This is stupid.
AMEN! Do you know how that is obvious from the article itself? Look at these lines.
The very first line:In the world according to Father Benedict Groeschel, the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal is largely the stuff of fiction.
Sorry, he never said that.
He prescribed a return to conservative moral teachings, saying that nothing would restore confidence in church leadership "better than a firm stance against pornography, extramarital sex, abortion, euthanasia and the general moral decline of the United States. ... Tough topics like contraception and autoeroticism need to be consistently and publicly addressed."
Very true, but in context of the rest of this article, why did this need to be mentioned, unless to "out" him as a "closeminded" conservative.
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